The present disclosure relates to a support mechanism for supporting a flexible cable used for wiring in electronic apparatuses, such as image forming apparatuses, which include a plurality of electronic components.
An electronic apparatus, such as an image forming apparatus, has many kinds of electronic components arranged therein. What is commonly used for electrical connection between such electronic components is a wiring cable having a connector at its each end to be joined to a connection connector provided in each electronic component.
In particular, a ribbon-shaped flexible cable (Flexible Flat Cable, FFC), in which a plurality of conductors are arranged in parallel to each other inside a coating member, is so flexible that it is bendable into any shape. This helps reduce wiring space, and thus FFCs are widely used as wiring cables in electronic apparatuses.
In a case where wiring is achieved by using two such flexible flat cables, electric signals respectively transmitted through the two flexible flat cables interfere with each other to generate electromagnetic wave noise, which becomes a main cause of a malfunction of an electronic apparatus. Further, a flexible flat cable is disadvantageously more prone to damage than normal wiring cables because of its flat ribbon-like shape.
Against such a background, there have been proposed various measures to deal with noise occurring in cases of using a flexible flat cable; for example, a method is known in which, in an electronic apparatus including a flat multi-electrode first harness which connects between electric units and is capable of transmitting signals, and a multi-electrode second harness which is arranged in parallel to the first harness, a critical signal is assigned to the Nth pin of the first harness, and signals of stable potential are assigned to the (N−1)th pin and the (N+1)th pin, which are adjacent to the Nth pin to which the critical signal is assigned, and a signal of stable potential is assigned to a pin of the second harness that physically overlaps the Nth pin of the first harness.
There is also known a method for eliminating problems of unnecessary radiation noise and so on by separating a high-voltage generating device into a high-voltage generator and a control circuit, which are connected to each other by a flat cable for various signals and power supply, and by disposing a ground line near a transmission line for transmitting signals for detecting voltage or current outputted from the high-voltage generator.